But staff (who are generally a fair bit older and therefore more at risk than the majority of students they teach) can't be safe if universities are run 'as normal'. No university has enough really large lecture halls to be able to safely accommodate socially distanced students plus staff for all the lectures that would normally be running at the same time. There simply isn't room. And if students were asked to 'go back to normal' and cram into regular lecture rooms, a lot of them (quite rightly) would object. Tutorials and seminars couldn't run 'as normal' without risk to staff members and students, because of proximity. And PPE at a level of what would be used in a university only goes so far to protect staff - what would protect them more would be if ALL students wore face coverings. My DH is a university lecturer. During his F2F seminars (yes, he is doing some F2F teaching, it is still happening!) he has to ask the bloody students to put on face coverings EVERY BLOODY TIME, ffs.
PPE only goes so far, and there will always be objections to lecturers wearing face coverings because someone can't hear.
I think students just have to accept that this is a really crap situation, that it will improve over time and that they - like every-bloody-body else! - have to get on with it.
The reported suicides this term are, I'm afraid, a red herring, as many other posters have pointed out. It's very sad, but there are hundreds of thousands of students in higher education and a small number of them will already be suffering severe MH issues. Universities have help available but obviously this is something that even in normal years, they can only go so far to mitigate.